Heidi Peaster was born into an sprawling, old Southern family and cut her teeth on old Southern family stories. After studying journalism in college, she married her high-school sweetheart and proceeded to raise a family. During the next twenty-odd years, she and her husband Roger reared their three biological daughters, fostered abused and neglected special needs children, and eventually adopted six.After retiring from being foster parents, the Peasters moved to their 18 acre homestead in the North Georgia Mountains with their remaining five children. Here, Peaster began to freelance write and has been published in several magazines such as You and Me Medical, Green Prints, and Georgia… Family Life.Through it all, she continued to write about the fictitious McKenna family, the series of books about a sprawling, mountain clan not unlike Peaster's own family, in temperament if not in particulars.Now, the McKenna Chronicles are ready to be read by the public. As Peaster states: "It's only right. Writing about the McKennas during naptime all these years has made it possible for me to raise all these kids."Peaster and her husband still homestead on their land, raising vegetables and chickens and selling eggs to their neighbors while caring for the children who are still at home. They now also have five grandchildren and one "on the way".